By Brian Webber: WBA tremendous flyweight champion Joshua Franco (18-13, 8 KOs) and WBO champ Kazuto Ioka (29-2-1, 15 KOs) fought to a questionable 12 spherical majority draw on Saturday evening of their indication struggle on the Ota-Metropolis Common Gymnasium in Tokyo, Japan.
Though youthful and far larger Franco outworked the 33-year-old former four-division world champion Ioka, the judges scored it a draw by the scores:
115-113 – Franco
114-114
114-114
With the house crowd in Japan going wild every time Ioka would land something, it’s not a shock that the judges scored it a draw, however the struggle wasn’t shut.
Franco dominated the competition together with his nonstop stress, mixture punching, and the amount of pictures that he landed within the struggle. His mixture punching was lovely to look at, as he was unloading with punches, overwhelming Ioka’s defensive shell.
Franco’s combating fashion was much like WBA gentle heavyweight champion Dmitry Bivol with how he fought Canelo. He was like a smaller model of Bivol, and was enjoyable to look at him work. The one distinction between Franco & Bivol was the shortage of protection for the smaller fighter.
Franco was getting hit between the combos he was throwing and didn’t do an excellent job of blocking the odd pictures that Ioka was throwing.
Nonetheless, Franco was throwing so many combos and touchdown TONS of punches that it was not possible to offer Ioka multiple spherical within the struggle.
You may argue that one of the best spherical within the struggle for Ioka was the eleventh, during which he caught Franco with some tasty proper arms to the pinnacle. With that mentioned, Franco nonetheless outworked Ioka by a big margin within the eleventh spherical and had him in opposition to the ropes the complete time.
This author had the 27-year-old Franco profitable 11-1, as he outworked a really defensive-looking and far older Ioka by an amazing margin. In a lot of the rounds, Ioka would again up in opposition to the ropes and try to struggle off Franco by touchdown single pictures in between his barrages of pictures.
All the things Franco threw within the struggle was lighter punches meant to make contact. Nonetheless, with Franco throwing 3 to 7-punch combos on the whole lot he threw, it was not possible to offer Ioka rounds as a result of was getting bombarded by the youthful fighter.
WBC tremendous flyweight champion Juan Francisco Estrada was at ringside, eyeing the 2 champions and can seemingly struggle one among them subsequent. Estrada has extra pop in his punches than Franco and & Ioka, and he’ll give them issues.
I’d nonetheless favor Franco over Estrada as a result of his youth, measurement, and his excessive work fee. Franco is an impressive mixture puncher from Bivol mildew, and that may be an excessive amount of for the outdated veteran Estrada.
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